This invention relates to stencilling of web stock.
Screen stencilling of stock is well known for coating materials such as inks, adhesives, and/or other functional and/or decorative deposits on stock in a selected pattern by forcing the material through a stencil screen pattern. Example products of the process are posters, decalcomania, graphic designs, adhesive patterns and the like. Sometimes only one coating is applied, while often multiple coatings, e.g. of multiple colors, are applied in successive stencilling steps, each layer being dried before applying the subsequent coating.
The drying step for each coating normally requires substantial space and time, tending to limit the speed of the entire operation, as well as tremendously increasing the equipment size and expense. The complexities caused by this factor are further compounded when stencilling and then drying web stock using concentrated heat on localized web areas, by the necessity of feeding the web stock intermittently through the stencilling station and then continuously through the drying station to prevent overheating of the localized web areas.